Brazil and the World

THOMAS: All right. Good afternoon, everyone, both here in Washington and also online. My name is Jessica Thomas, and I am managing director of strategic initiatives and diversity, equity and inclusion business partner here at the Council on Foreign Relations. And it’s my absolute honor to welcome you all to the Twelfth Annual Conference on Diversity in International Affairs.

Now, this conference brings together participants and speakers from a wide range of backgrounds, including those that have been historically underrepresented in the international affairs field. This is an important conference, and we’re so thrilled that each of you could be here and join us for it. Now, as you connect with other conference participants and you take the opportunity to learn a little bit more about roles and careers in international affairs, we hope that you’ll also find yourself inspired by the role that you can play in international affairs. Now, for those of you who are joining us here in person, we will have—CFR we’ll have individuals here tonight and tomorrow as well to share about internship opportunities, career opportunities, fellowship opportunities, that are here at the Council. If you’re joining us online, of course, you’re welcome to check...

CHAN: Hi, good morning, everyone. How are you? Just heard that you had a great session with Mayor Garcetti and President Michael Froman. I hope you’re all excited. I hope we can live up to that panel. (Laughter.)

Thank you to our panelists for joining today’s CFR Conference on Diversity in International Affairs second plenary, Perspectives on Global Press Freedoms and the Future of Journalism. I’m Sewell Chan. I’m a CFR member. I’m the editor-in-chief of the Texas Tribune, a nonprofit news organization based in Austin, Texas. And I’ll be presiding over today’s discussion. We are joined today by conference participants attending in person in Washington and virtually via Zoom. And I’ll just briefly introduce them.

Miriam Elder, immediately to the left, is the current Edward R. Murrow press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. A really distinguished journalist who has also had the opportunity to lead a newsroom, being a Buzzfeed World Editor and overseeing a team of journalists worldwide that really did a lot of extraordinary investigative journalism during a pretty record run.

Pir Zubair Shah is a very, very well-known Pakistani journalist who has been covering AfPak, South Asia, Southwest Asia, and security issues for many,...

SENGUPTA: Hello, everyone! Welcome to the last panel of this afternoon’s program at Council on Foreign Relations. My name is Somini Sengupta. I’m the international climate correspondent for the New York Times.

I am really delighted to learn from our panelists today.

Luisa Palacios, you’re a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy. Just recently you completed a two-year period on the board of directors of Citgo Petroleum Corporation. You know a great deal about Brazil and the world.

Monica de Bolle?

DE BOLLE: Yeah.

SENGUPTA: Did I get that?

DE BOLLE: You got it right. You did. (Laughs.)

SENGUPTA: OK. You told me to ignore everything other than that you’re a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. (Laughter.) You’ve been there since January 2017.

And joining us online from Kigali, Rwanda, where it’s past dinnertime—well past dinnertime—thank you for joining us, Natalie Unterstell. You are currently serving as the president of Talanoa, a climate policy think tank in Brazil. Thank you for being with us so late in the evening.

We’re going to have, you know, a conversation that I hope will be rich and engaging for all of you, we’ll open up...